 Hello, thank you for joining me. That was two Tartra trams. We're in Riga today. We're standing on the bridge over the river Dalgarba, I think it is. The bridge you see over there, that's the railway bridge where that's your train just just coming off it. It's the longest bridge in Latvia and it's simply known as the railway bridge. It's minus two degrees here so it's pretty cold and in this video we're going to find out a bit more about the railways of Latvia. So you've got Riga city centre over there. You can just see the tower of St Peter's Cathedral. To find out more about the railways though we're heading this way. See that building over there? That's the library. It's not where we're going. Behind the library is the Latvian Railway Museum and that's where we're going to find out a bit more about the railways of this country. So I've only just arrived in Riga this morning. I've had a little look around the city centre. I've not seen much yet. There is a lot to see. There will be other videos. So I've just sort of got the live land. I've not been on a tram yet. They've got those old Tartra trams. I've seen some of them. I've seen a couple of Skoda trams in one modern month. There's another bridge over there. There's the Radisson Blue Hotel over there. Funny thing is this city is about the same size as Glasgow and last time I stayed in Glasgow I actually stayed in the Radisson Blue so there's a little connection just to only a high cut of sea between the two cities. That's for the railway bridge. Well it was built in 1909 but it was shelled in the first and second world war so it's been rebuilt twice. If you look very carefully you can just see some of the abutments of the bridge's predecessor. Anyway I'm going to continue walking along here following the tram lines. I'm going to find the Railway Museum. There's the library building behind me and there's two Tartra trams. I think it might be the same ones. I'm sure it was free Trevello too. They've gone to the end of the route and come back in the time. I was having a look at the river taking a few trains in between this and the last shot. The Railway Museum I said would just be on the library. That's it there. I can work out the word museum and I think yeah the first word must mean railway. Anyway we're going across the road now. It's just like an old depot and there goes the Tartra Trams and that's where we shall hopefully find some interesting railway items to think of. There's a more modern Skoda filled tram so as I've said the Skoda Trams also make up big and sweet. So I'm not so keen on those but you know I'll probably have a ride on them. Really if you ride on the Tartra Trams. I'm not going to put the camera against the window because you can see when we go inside but I can just see the rolling stock through the window. So we are very nearly there and then yeah oh water arts for trams. 30917 is a bus in the way and 30928. By the way they do also have trolley buses here. They've got their point work there for the trolley bus wise to go different routes so we'll probably see some trolley buses as well. I'll do a video though on the tram set for video and we'll go and ride them, try out some of the routes. It's quite an interesting network of lines they have here. Oh that's what I like to see. Good offence. I can see a few steam engines. As soon as we get past this gate which I can only assume is the entrance. I didn't see an entrance down there. We'll be able to go and have a closer look at these steam engines and then I'll place to go in. We're glad to get inside the trolley coals. It's cold. Snow on the crowns. I seem to come to these places in winter. Yeah that's definitely the entrance. Let's just have a little look over here. I won't go and walk around it yet because you might have to get your ticket before you go and look around. Or maybe you don't have to pay to go into that part. I'm not too sure. Anyway we've got two steam locomotives. Now these are course of the Russian gauge of five foot. And look at that. We're Soviet looking diesel there. So there's quite a lot of stuff to see. Some looking forward to having a wander down there once we've been inside. I'm going to go like I said go inside. I think if we can just walk down there. These people clearly just having a look around. Let's go. I'm going to go and pay to go in there first and we'll see what's inside. And then we'll come and have a look at these steam diesel locomotives. Oh here we are. We're inside the museum as you come in. Come in and put the doors over there. Page just behind me. There's this track here and it's got a little rail bike. Some of them motorised like that one. Has a little engine on it. And then ones like this where you have to work it yourself. You pull backwards and forwards. I did have a girl on the one at Boone Pest in the Royal Museum there. Now as I said this is the five foot gauge. And here looking at these little wagons. The track does feel really really big compared to what we used to in the UK. Looks like some of them. That's got more powerful. Basically it looks like it's got a motorbike and puts it onto one of these. And it can tow a trailer with luggage on here. Look at that. I'm sure that's just a motorbike. With this little one that'd be quite fun. That one again is worked by a pedal pad. So what we're going to do now, we'll have a little look around the museum. They've given me this. It is also in English so a little guide to the museum to show us everything we can see. So we come into this room here and it's quite interesting. This tells you about the railway, the people on the railway. So it shows you the uniforms. Men and women's uniforms. As you can see. So this is the old different eras. Interestingly you can see the uniforms. What they would have looked like. But you can also see what underwear was part of their uniforms. It's not often like I show new women and men for that matter in their underwear on this channel. There you go. So a bit different. So let's have a look around here. So this is all about signaling apparatus. There's a film on also showing about how single line tokens work. And what's quite good here. They've got all the buildings or a building, a station building, dissected all the rooms to show you what you'd find inside. So which one this one is? I'll tell you. So that's Rowanman's Park. So it's where the Station Master would have lived. There he is sitting on the toilet reading the paper. And this one's a bed. Who knows. So that's Rowanman's apartment. And we have a look around the telegraph room. You can see the lady. So this is quite a nice way of showing you what would be inside the station. It's a nice scale. Look at the railway cat watching. It's always nice to see a railway cat talking of railway cats. In the other telegraph room is a railway cat. And there's the man on the phone sorting out the trains, ringing through to the next signal box, sending a train from one section to another. And then here, this is the restaurant, the station restaurant. So that's quite interesting. Now, what I've got is, on the other side, some of them may have a drawer. So if you open the drawer, you can see a meal you may have had in the station buffet. So I think that's quite a nice feature. This is the station master. And if we have a look, can you see him through the window? Yes, the cat is on his head. Let's have a look around this side. Station master sat there with the railway cat on his head. And if you have a look, there's his watch. And there's his whistle to the station train. So we go over to here. What else are we going to find? There's a lady selling newspapers. It's like the Latin version of W.H. Smith, no doubt. And then we go to here. There's a lady selling tickets through the window. So we'd go around here and you can see from inside. And this time, the railway cat is, however you can see it, but it's sat on the chair. Now, one of those rooms we've just seen, they all belong in this building here. So here's a smaller model. So you can press different things. So press kiosk and it actually lights up. See the lights burn. On, railway ticket off it. What have I just done? Okay. Right, I don't think Latin stations do this in real life. What are we doing? It's coming apart. So we can see inside. So yeah, there's all those rooms exactly as we saw. So upstairs, we saw the railway man's apartment. Oh, yeah. If I look how well you can see that, but he's there. So I can just see it's half of the show on camera. He is sat down on the toilet just as we saw him in the slightly bigger version. So there we go. That's the Latvian railway station. That's quite an interesting introduction in this room to Latvian railways. Here's some of the luggage you're seeing. I think I should get on the train and carry luggage like that to see what everyone thinks. That's what we got. This is quite a good little exhibit. Look, got a steam locomotive, a horse and some people walking. I think if I turn his hand, we'll see which one's the fastest. I think we know the answer, but let's just do it anyway. Yes, we all know the steam engine. I was going to win that race. That's one horse I wouldn't bet on, not that I do gambling anyway. So we come back out to here and then we'll go outside soon. We'll go into the other room of this museum. So there's a few things to see. As we come into here, we've got a great model railway. Look at that. What is that? It's here, a railway. So this is a low gauge scale, this model railway. Now it says that the trains run on the half hour. So what we'll do, I'll come and watch them later on when they run and I'll probably put all that into a separate video. So to see the trains running, watch this video on screen now. Let's have a look at another train or locomotive, a full size one, narrow gauge one, M1657. So this would have ran on Latvia's two foot gauge railway network, which you had quite a big two foot gauge railway network and pretty much every narrow gauge steam engine in Latvia is very similar to this. They're built by various different companies. See, we can find a work number on it. Off top of my head, I couldn't tell you the work number, but if I can't see it on the loco, then what I shall do is I will find out when I finish the video and I'll put a link on screen. I can't actually see a work number, but anyway, we don't have a renderer there. So this loco, it's work number on screen now. So there you go. Go to here, it explains the origins of railways. Now interestingly, they seem to use British locomotives. Look at that, that's Richard Trevific written in Latin and there's his steam locomotive. Of course there's rocket. I think rocket probably like fine Scotsman is recognized the world over. I know even in Hungary, they actually have a Hungarian name for flyer Scotsman, the Repalu Scots, which literally means flyer Scotsman. So we've got, as a diagram explaining how train works, steam locomotive works, again, rocket. And there's a cross section of a cylinder, so I don't know, no, basically steam goes in there, action rods turn the wheel. So that's how steam locomotive works. We go around here, more information, again, it is all in Latin, but there's a few films playing and dated to the English as well. That looks like a fire engine, one that you would pull along by hand. And then we go through to here, there's a steam locomotive boiler. So this I don't count as seeing a steam engine. I have to see the frames are what a loco takes its identity from. So this is probably off a classmate of that narrow gauge loco behind us, I see the section that you can see. So again, for those of you who don't know very simple terms, the fire is in there. You can see there's some wood in there, fire burns away, and there's water in here. The heat flows through these these blue tubes, they probably aren't usually blue, that's to show that the water will be on this side. And the steam raises up to the dome, and goes down to the cylinders to power the steam locomotive. So that is boiler of a steam loco. Go around here, there's some more diagrams to do with signalling and shunting. There's quite a good little film, I was watching it, they played it in English and again in Latvia, about hump yards. So that's quite interesting how hump yard works in that the wagons roll down by gravity, they can be sorted into different trains. There's a basic map of Latvia, there's railway network over there. Now what we're going to do, we're going to go through here, I think this is like the museum's cloakroom. I think those seats are probably out of an old railway carriage. And then we go down into this rather large room here. And there's a few more things to see. It's quite a big room, there's not a lot in, I think they probably held events here. So when we first came to the museum from outside, this was the building we could see, and I said I could see rolling stock through windows. Well this is what I could see, these narrow gauge wagons. There's like a building here, I don't know. Oh and I see, it's a bit like what traveling on a train in Latvia would be like or an older train. I don't think there's any standard gauge or there certainly isn't standard gauge working steam in Latvia, because they don't have standard gauge. I don't think there's any five foot working steam in Latvia. I think there might be one of those narrow gauge locos. There might be one or two of them working, but I won't be seeing them on this visit. There's a narrow gauge wagon, and that is a snow pebble. It's actually built out the tender of an old steam locomotive. Again this is two foot. Most of the Latvia narrow gauge railways were two foot, and there are one or two around two tourist narrow gauge railways in that bit at two foot. So maybe on another visit, I'm probably just going to do the capital. I might go to another city. I'm not sure yet. Looking out there on the snow behind the lights playing. We can't really see. That's the weather library, which we have a look at. Now then let's have a look over here. You've got an hour gauge carriage next to a five foot gauge carriage. And as you can see, the five foot gauge carriage is pretty big. I don't think we can go in that one, but we can go in a narrow gauge one. So let's have a look at that. Very basic. Now as we know today it's cold. We have a stove, keeping nice and warm. Wooden stove. It's certainly been quite fun travelling through the countryside in that as long as you're warm. If we want to sit next to the stove, anyway, down here in between the standard and not the standard five foot and an hour gauge. If you look at the old picture there, that's what I think this carriage is. Well, that bridge there, that's the bridge we saw at the beginning of the video. So let's have a look inside this rather large five foot gauge carriage. Let's see inside it. Let's have a ride. It's a shame there's no steam working steam in that via on the five foot gauge. It'd be great fun to have a ride on one. We'll go and have a look at those echoes outside there. And then here that there's a cab of a diesel. I'm not sure that's a diesel. I think it might be a diesel multiple unit. I'm not too sure. I'll be able to work it out by the number. When I have a look in my Preserve Railways of Europe stock book, it would probably tell me I've got that. And it's back at where I'm staying. I didn't read with me to hear, and I came to hear that. This is the cab of this diesel train or locomotive, whatever it is. The smell doesn't change. Wherever you go, that sort of diesel smell and steam for that matter. Wherever you go, it's always that same smell. It's quite welcoming. You're not going to be able to see it through the window, but I can just see two tartar trams outside. I like some of the tartar trams. They still use the trolley poles, which is quite old fashioned. I've never really seen something quite like that before. So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to go back into the main room, hopefully see the model trains going and then we'll go and have a look at the exhibits outside. I enjoyed looking around the indoor part of the museum. I'm ready to go out in the cold again now and see what we have to see outside, because as we saw when we arrived, there was quite a few exhibits outside. So that's where we came in. Roll over there. Let's go and have a look at all these exhibits. So it looks quite extensive. The tracks continue on down there. I can see they go beyond some gates. They probably go and join up with the Latvian Railway network. And they don't seem to do any rides at the moment. They'd be quite good if they did, but they've got a nice variety of stock steam diesel and electric thrust to have a look at. So started this big diesel logo here. It's a little very similar to the cab we saw inside. So I'm going to take a guess that that is one of those very Russian looking. It's even got the star on the front. And this is its Russian style number here. So I'll be ticking these off later on in my preserved locomotives book. And there we have a steam logo. Great big beast, a 210. I think it's Russian built. It's pretty large. Obviously it's bigger than, you know, probably all the steam engines I've ridden on, because in Germany I've seen some pretty big ones, but of course their standard gauge. Just his five foot gauge. It's got some of its connection rods missing, I think. And so it's pretty unlikely steam again, but what a beast it would be if it did. We can go up to the foot plates. Let's go up here, have a look. Yeah, it's a shame to know all these icicles falling off it. Yeah, steam loco should be warm. And, you know, usually going on to a steam loco's foot plate is a warm place, not place where you see icicles hanging down, snow blowing in the door. But anyway, at least we can have a look. And it is actually slightly warmer in here, only very slightly warmer. It's pretty big. So, yeah, the driver had us out there. And imagine driving this beast. Looking forward. It would have been great. I get the impression going, I think it was a mechanically fired loco, because as this door, I don't know if I'm supposed to do this. Yeah, look in there. I think it's oil fired as well, you know. Maybe not. I can't see any evidence of coal. But yeah, it looks to me, although maybe it's not mechanically fired, because there's firebox doors. To be honest, firing a steam loco isn't something I know too much about. I just like to see them and ride behind them. But the actual mechanical side of things, I can't say I know that much about. But if you ever get a chance to ride a cab foot plate of a steam engine, it's an amazing experience. So that's looking back towards the museum. As you can see, though, while we're up at this elevated level, we can see what else there is, typically Russian carriage. Another steam loco and there's a few diesel loco. So let's go down there now and have a look. Still can't get over the sheer enormity of this loco. In fact, I've just noticed up there, that's the missing connecting rod up there. And up there, that looks like a works plate, right up there on the dome. So let's go and have a look. And this next one looks very similar to me, like a Kriegslock, a German steam loco. But they did have them, there were some built to five foot gauges. I'm guessing that's what this is. It looks to me just like one. So we'll go and have a look, see what the thing tells us. There's another road there that tends to have overhead line equipment. We'll have a look at that in a minute. What does it say? Steam locomotive. Oh yeah, the German class 52. And it says it was built in castle in Germany. So yeah, this is basically a Kriegslock built to the Russian gauge. So that wouldn't fit on Germany's railways. So yeah, at least. Over there says what appears to be half of an electric multiple unit in a new, again, very Russian looking. We'll go and have a look at that in a minute. That's interesting. That carriage there, it looks to me. Why has it got bars on the windows? We can't go in for that. Oh, it says available for viewing during a guided tour. I suppose you can do them. Whatever that's to do with crossing the border so people can't escape. Let's see if I can see what it says on here. I've just been very careful. Don't fall over on a slippery step. Oh, it's a prisoner. A prisoner transportation carriage. So that explains the mesh on the window. So prisoners would have written in that. Not saying anyone should do anything bad or anything, but if you were to go to prison, you get to ride in that. I wonder what it's like inside. Probably not very nice, but you probably did get some decent locos for haulage. Anyway, talking of decent locos, we've got a mix of diesels from some smallish ones. Some pretty massive ones. A double diesel. We'll have a look at that in a minute. Oh, there's another rail bike. It's chained to the track. If it wasn't, I'd be so tempted to try and go for a ride, but we shouldn't. I can't. So you can't see. Look at that tiny little bridge there, Phil. The train wouldn't get over that or under that. It might smash over it if it was moving. Let's have a little wander down here and then we'll come back and look at those diesel workers. They've got a big crane here. That's interesting to see. I'm not sure it's steam powered or not. That big grabber thing. And then, I'm not too sure about. It's like we've got tampers and some overhead line equipment. That looks like some little inspection saloon. Yeah, that's definitely a tamper. We can, I sort of see tampers out and about on network, whether it's in the UK or abroad. We don't often get a chance to go and have a good look at one. So I can show you one here now, show you what they do. So I see these funny little arm-like things. They tamp the ballast. There is, they do have ballast in that. It's just under all this snow. They tamp the ballast and make the track nice and smooth for the train to run on. That vehicle there, it's an overhead line inspection platform. So you can see the insulators below the platform. The people who stand up there, they'll be able to work on the overhead lines. There isn't actually any overhead lines here. There's a signal. There's a Kriegssock again. And there's our big Russian built steamerco. So we're going to wander down here now. It's great. And like I said, I've pretty much got the place myself. There are other visitors around, but when I go, if I go to a museum that doesn't have anything running, I tend to try and pick a weekday when it's open. There's two reasons for that. One is if you go on a weekday when it's not school holidays, you're likely to feel like you've got the place yourself, but like I have, makes making a video a lot easier. Also on the weekends or out on the weekends, it's when other places that offer rides tend to be running. So that's why if I was here, so on a weekend day, I would be unlikely to come somewhere like this because I could be at a minute's railway, narrow gauge, standard gauge, whatever, rail at all. Yeah. So that's why tend to come to these places on a weekday. A little diesel loco here. So we can have a look at, yes, that's built in Russia, built in 1981, it says. So it's not that old. I'm intrigued by that though. That is a huge beast. In fact, it's a double loco. I think they do have M62s here in Latvia. There were some on the model railway. I've seen them in Hungary. Where they have what's called a 2M62, it's basically a double one. I've seen them in Lithuania. Love a little diesel loco. You can just see its works plate up there. And they're getting bigger now. Look, this one's effectively got the Latvian flag, the red and white. It's quite nice looking loco. So that's an 040. That's an 060. That's what's called a bow bow as in four. And then that's the next one might be a cocoa. And then that is like a cocoa time spirit in the wheel. So yeah, this is huge, this loco, for a single loco. I think that's also some very similar ones in Vilnius in the yard a few years ago when I went to Vilnius. Even this is only a shunting loco. Built in Russia in 1972, the thing tells me. Can't believe that's a shunting loco. I imagine that was for heavy freight or something. So yeah, it's required for heavy shunting. And this must be required for very heavy freight or heavy passenger trains. As we have seen, there's a lot of snow. It's not really deep. It's not really causing a problem. It does though. They've got snow clouds. We saw a narrow gauge one inside. Here we have a much larger standard gauge one to get across the track. That's why there's nothing coming along. What does it say? Self propelled. So here built in 1946 in Russia. So it seems like it had its own power. Some snow clouds you just simply put them in front of a locomotive. You can see that. It's like it's concrete in there. So keep it down. It needs to be very heavy. Some of them, yeah, would have been pushed by a locomotive, but that one obviously propelled itself. That I think is probably another prison carriage because it's got again meshed windows. So I'm kind of walking just because I'm here. I might as well walk to the end of the site. And I've got beyond there is Latvian Railways. I can see some overhead wires in this and so I'm not going to worry about waiting around for a train. I'm going to have to go and have a visit to the main railway station. See what there is to see. I don't think Latvia is the best country to travel behind locomotive trains. I saw a few trains crossing the bridge. They're all the units, but quite interesting looking units. This reminds me a bit of the National Rail Museum in York walking down here. They do their rides up and down. They used to do much longer rides at the end of the road, but they don't anymore. They'd be great, wouldn't they? If they could, maybe those steam locomotives are a bit big, but if they had one of those little diesels pushing a carriage up and down here, because it's going to do much else to this bit of land, or even down the miniature railway, that's not criticizing the place. It's great museum, but yeah, if it did some form of ride, especially all the space they've got, it would be a really fantastic museum. As we walk back though, of course, there's the library over there looking down on us. It's a good view from the library. I was like a student here and I had to study in the library. I'd be looking out the window all the time, although at least I wouldn't be looking out the window. Well, that's what I was going to say. I wouldn't see any moving trains, so I don't need to look out once, but you probably can see the main line as well. When we got to see an electric locomotive like that though, I don't know. I think that's pretty much the preserve one, but it is obviously presented here in the museum. I've not seen any locos out on the network since arriving here in Latvia, just seeing trams and trains. Look at there's the snow power again. It's a pretty big thing this is. All right, where should we go now? I think we'll go over there. There was one other little vehicle I thought looked worth looking at. I think we've pretty much seen the whole of this museum. It'd be nice for me to start off my visits to Latvia. I've been to this country before. I said I went to Vilnius a few years ago. In fact, if you want to have a look at the museum there, it does actually remind me a bit of the museum there. It was in two parts. I was only able to go in the indoor part. The outdoor part was not open to the public, but you could see it all from the railway station. So have a look at Lincoln's screen now. You can see the similarities. You can see what there is to see at the Vilnius Railway Museum. Yes, that's the other half of that EMU. You can see I've obviously not been able to preserve the whole thing, which is a bit of a shame, but at least I've preserved some of it. Again, very Russian looking. It probably was built in Russia. So we'll go down to the front of the EMU and then I think after that I'll probably do some tram bashing and then go have a look around, find a nice restaurant, try some Latvian food. As I say, when I come to these places I do like to experience the food, the culture, the transport, everything. So I have one more thing to show you. That's the EMU as I said. I'm too lucky in front of it. White beast. And there's a big mound covered in snow to stop it. But look at this funny thing here. That's not a truck. It might have been once, but it's actually on rails. It's narrow gauge. Look at that. It's a narrow gauge truck. There were extensive narrow gauge rows in Latvia. There is still one heritage one. I don't think I'm going to get a visit on this visit, but maybe for the future, if I was to come here in the summer, perhaps. I understand there are a lot of peat railways in Latvia. It's a bit like there was in Ireland, and this would have worked on the peat railways from what I read. So yeah, that is a narrow gauge exhibit outside. That clearly looks like some sort of old good shed there. And again, there's the library. Let's go around to the front now behind or in front of the two steam locomotives. And that's where we can finish this video. So if you want to come and visit the museum, it is pretty easy to get to. You've only got to walk across the river from the city centre, or you could get on the tram. It's served by a few tram routes, the routes coming on screen now. So it's easy to get to. It's not a hard place to get to. Talking of getting around, this little station here is about a new high speed line they want to build to connect Latvia north with Estonia and south with Lithuania and further south. So it's a bit like high speed too, but for the Baltics. Yeah, wonder what people there think of it, because not everyone's so keen on high speed so in England's. That's a separate subject, but I'd just be interested to know what people think of it, generally in favour or not. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video, this visit to the Raleigh Museum in Latvia, I certainly have. Very cold. My hand is very cold from holding this camera. I think I need to get some gloves on, maybe get a coffee or tea in my hand to warm up. But from the Raleigh Museum in Latvia, thanks for watching. Please do feel free to like, subscribe and comment. Goodbye.